Sunday, October 16, 2016

“He’s determined to cause lasting damage”—Timothy Egan

“…He’s
made America vile. He’s got angel-voiced children yelling ‘bitch’ and flipping
the bird at rallies. He’s got young athletes chanting ‘build a wall’ at Latino
kids on the other side. He’s made it O.K. to bully and fat-shame. He’s
normalized perversion, bragging about how an aging man with his sense of
entitlement can walk in on naked women.

“Here’s
his lesson for young minds: If you’re rich and boorish enough, you can get away
with anything. Get away with sexual assault. Get away with not paying taxes.
Get away with never telling the truth. Get away with flirting with treason. Get
away with stiffing people who work for you, while you take yours. Get away with
mocking the disabled, veterans and families of war heroes.

“You
know this by now — all the sordid details. For much of the last year, the
Republican presidential nominee has been a freak show, an oh-my-God spectacle.
He opens his mouth, our cellphones blow up. But now, in the final days of a
horrid campaign, an unshackled Trump is more national threat than punch line.
He’s determined to cause lasting damage.

“Is
there one sector of society he has yet to maul? Until this week, it was the
denial wing of his own party, those ‘leaders’ who looked the other way while
their leader walked all over the Constitution.

“But
those who take pleasure in watching Trump destroy the Republican Party are
missing the bigger picture. He’s trying to destroy the country, as well.
Civility, always a tenuous thing, cannot be quickly restored in a society that
has learned to hate in public, at full throttle.

“Trump
has made compassion suspect. Don’t reach out to starving refugees — they’re
killers in disguise. Don’t give to a charity that won’t reward you in some way.
Don’t pay taxes that build roads and offer relief to those washed away in a
hurricane. That’s a sucker’s game. We’re not all in this together. Taxes are
for stupid people.

“Every
sexual predator now has a defender at the top of the Republican ticket. The
most remarkable thing about last Sunday’s debate was Anderson Cooper having to
school a 70-year-old man on workplace taboos that most of us learn on our first
job. ‘You described kissing women without consent, grabbing their genitals,’
said Cooper. ‘That is sexual assault. You bragged that you have sexually
assaulted women. Do you understand that?’

“What
you heard was the lecture the human resources director gives just before saying,
‘You’re fired.’ Trump could not get hired at the drive-through window at a Jack
in the Box. Knowing about his history would make any employer liable. It took
decades to get the workplace to that point where Trumpian predators are shunned.
Given the biggest pulpit in the world, Trump is trying to bring that consensus
down.

“He
calls it locker room talk. The locker room has pushed back, resoundingly. Let’s
call it what it is — the workplace. And as Trump told Howard Stern in 2005,
when he bragged about his voyeur intrusions into backstage beauty pageants, ‘I
sort of get away with things like that.’ He made a similar comment — the
blueprint for his actions — in the 2005 television tape that has blown up in
his face. If he can do it, any creep outside of the celebrity bubble should be
able to get away with the same thing.

“He’s
destroyed whatever moral standing leading Christian conservatives had —
starting with Mike Pence. Their selective piety is not teachable. Take solace
in one of the small acts of courage breaking out in recent days: a group of
students at Liberty University telling their Trump-supporting president, Jerry
Falwell Jr., to practice what the school preaches.

“Trump
is ‘actively promoting the very things that we Christians ought to oppose,’ the
students wrote. These young people, at least, are smart enough to see what
Trump is doing to their world. It will take many people like those students,
and like the first lady, Michelle Obama, a model of decency and class, to
repair the awful damage Trump has done.

“In
a powerful speech Thursday, the nation’s most respected public figure scorned
the ‘hurtful, hateful language’ of Trump and its effect on children: ‘The
shameful comments about our bodies. The disrespect of our ambitions and intellect.
The belief that you can do anything to a woman. It’s cruel. It’s frightening.’

“So
it has come to this: The core lessons that bind a civilized society are in play
in the last days of this election. We long for family dinners where Trump no
longer intrudes, for tailgate parties where football is all that matters, for
normalcy. Remember those days? They may be gone forever.”

Teacher/Poet/Musician

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Persona

A writer must “know and have an ever-present consciousness that this world is a world of fools and rogues… tormented with envy, consumed with vanity; selfish, false, cruel, cursed with illusions… He should free himself of all doctrines, theories, etiquettes, politics…” —Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?). “The nobility of the writer's occupation lies in resisting oppression, thus in accepting isolation” —Albert Camus (1913-1960). “What are you gonna do” —Bertha Brown (1895-1987).